Are You Tired Of Other Bloggers Outranking You?


September 6, 2013 Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Google+ Blogging Guide



Yes, you want your WordPress blog posts to achieve high search engine rankings, who doesn’t? But are you prepared to do the work?

Search engine optimization or SEO requires a lot of hard work and effort, but the benefits are worth it.

Bloggers Outranking You
Bloggers Outranking You

As a blogger, you don’t have to rely on SEO consultants or internet marketers to get the ranking you want. You can do it on your own by knowing the best tricks in the book. Other bloggers may already have discovered these tricks, which is why they have been outranking you for a while now. At this very moment, it is your time to shine, and shine you shall.

Keyword Research

Optimizing your WordPress blog posts requires the right use of keywords. How will you know what keyword to use? Keyword research is the answer. There are several free keyword research tools online that can help you discover what the best keywords for your blog topic is. You can start with Wordtracker, for example.

While the keyword research tools will give you a long list of keywords to optimize your posts, which one should you use? Which keyword is competitive enough? The trick when choosing a keyword is to pick one that has low competition so that there is a higher chance of landing the top ranks compared to keyword with high competition.

If you’re hesitant about using low-competition keywords or key phrases, hold that thought. These keywords don’t equate to less traffic and less sales. It’s just all about knowing the competition and positioning yourself.

Write the Post

The usual process of writing an optimized WordPress post is to think about a topic, research the keyword and write a post about it (in that order). Don’t write a post without choosing a keyword yet, because the post should be written around the keyword.

You’ll probably hear the words “quality content” over and over again but really, that is what you should be gunning for. Quality content is about providing readers with value; something they will learn from, relate to or solve problems with. It should be engaging enough. When you are able to produce high quality content, Google recognizes it and improves your chances of ranking higher.

Title, Title Tags and Meta Description Tags

Again, your chosen keyword or key phrase comes into play here. Include them in your title as well as in your title tags to rank higher. On the other hand, using keyword in meta description tags may not increase your rank. But the main purpose is to encourage searchers to click on the results where your meta tags are in bold.

The Article

The chosen keyword or key phrase should be seen within the article too. Google only requires a certain percentage of keyword density. Anything more than that will be marked spam so it is important that you are updated with these guidelines.

The article should be clear and concise and shall include the keyword in the beginning part of the article. Enclosing it in an H2 tag can help too. This move doesn’t necessarily impact your site’s ranking directly but it will have a positive impact on your readers.

There are also some bloggers that specifically put the keyword on the first and last paragraph, the second or third paragraph or anywhere.

Use Images

Any WordPress blog post is made more attractive with the help of images. It also makes more sense to visit a website with images related to the topic, makes it more enticing in general. So, when you publish blog posts in WordPress, make sure you use images that are related to the keyword or key phrase you are using.

While images cannot be crawled by Google bots, there are two main advantages of using them. The first is that search engine will acknowledge your effort of making a complete post. And second, this makes your post more accessible (searchers can see your images through Google Image search).

Set Permalinks

Permalinks usually are set at default. But the default setting is an inefficient URL structure and isn’t really good for SEO. Go to the Settings > Permalinks section in your WP admin and make sure that the URLs of your posts have some space for the keywords you’re targeting (the “postname” setting).

WordPress Static Homepage

Originally, WordPress is a blogging platform but today, it has become a content management system of some sort. By default, your home page will show the latest posts you have and some bloggers do not like this setting. It can be easily tweaked, though, by changing it to a static page. The primary benefit of doing this is to prevent any indexation issues or duplicate content.

Now, it is your turn to outrank other bloggers and take your blog site to a whole new level. But before we part ways, know that these changes will not take place overnight. You have to be consistent with your posts and get used to choosing the right keywords too.

Azalea is a passionate writer with years of experience. You can find her at newInternetOrder.com – a site where you can get advice on online business for normal people. Feel free to pay us a visit and get a nicely-designed blog post blueprint (how to write a blog post) for free with no opt-in. In her spare time, Azalea is interested in action-packed movies and harnessing positive vibes for a well-balanced lifestyle.

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Comments
  1. Mitch said on September 11, 2013 5:58 am:

    Hey Miki,
    great post and great information,
    there’s an seo technique called “drafting” it means you are only 1 step behind them, you have to find out where your competitors are promoting their content and follow their steps! because it is working for them and they outranked you!
    Simple but effective!
    Many thanks and Best Wishes!

  2. Sumita said on September 15, 2013 5:34 pm:

    I think it can help many people, I will share this information with friends and my relatives. I must say Select the target audience. Before any plans form and actions begin, you need to narrow your audience into a few categories.

  3. harman said on September 16, 2013 3:27 pm:

    I wish outrank the one who outranked you was this much simple, but you really helped me add up to my knowledge.
    Thanks 🙂

  4. Emmanuel said on September 16, 2013 3:32 pm:

    Hi Miki,
    I really like those sentiments you’ve shared in this lovely post of yours. Using images really do come in very handy and tends to be very beneficial as well!

  5. Leslie Trawler said on September 21, 2013 5:17 pm:

    I’ve always wanted to optimize my images. But I don’t know which WP plugin to use.

  6. Sebastian said on October 23, 2013 2:03 pm:

    I wasn’t aware of a lot of these tricks. Thanks for sharing! I’ll be reading more.